Mustang cockpit project—thank you, DMS!

DMS General
1

Thank you all for tolerating this project as long as you did, and many thanks to the many people whose overwhelming generosity with their time and skills allowed me to realize something that would otherwise have been virtually impossible. I joined DMS for the tools, but without you all, I’m sure I would have run out of money after several failed prototypes—and perhaps seriously hurt myself in the process. I simply cannot imagine tackling this project without your guidance—and often, direct help.

bts1-p51-mustang-cockpit-exterior%20copy

Before starting this project, I had never picked up a welding torch or used CAD software. I had never really worked with sheet metal, or metal tubing, or plastic, or CNC machines, and for that matter had never even set foot in a metal supply shop more well stocked than Home Depot. I was embarrassingly unfamiliar with WWII warbirds, and most of the tools that wound up being crucial for finishing the cockpit project—well, they were new to me.

Looking at the outcome of all that work (and thinking about the cost) I can’t help but wonder if it was a worthwhile investment. But the skills I learned and the people I met in the process have been more than enough to make me glad I did it.

I want to specially thank Jim Hartnett and Tim Bene for allowing me a more than reasonable amount of time in the metal shop as I struggled through several major hurdles in the fabrication process. I also want to specially thank Kris Anderson for her generous help in arranging space for me to complete the detailing of the cockpit, for her helpful tips and tricks on ways to improve the durability and appearance of some of the detail work, and for offering her considerable talents as a mask maker to create a plaster bust of a burnt corpse to use in a pyrotechnic effect shot.

Most of all, I want to thank David Schirato for his massive contribution of time, talent, staunch advocacy, and very hard work. I am beyond fortunate to have had his assistance, without which I’m not sure this project would ever have gotten off the ground.

DMS areas used

  • Metal Shop (main construction of cockpit frame and gimbal, plus some finishing work—used the CNC plasma cutter, MIG, TIG, slip roller, brake, sheer, band saw, vapor hone, grinders, sanders, and induction forge)
  • Machine Shop (saws for main construction and finishing, drills for cleaning up holes for gimbal bearings, Bridgeport for camera mounting bracket)
  • Woodshop (windshield, floorboards, form for vacuum forming, and finishing misc. small parts)
  • Workshop (almost all finishing work)
  • Automotive (misc. tools and gimbal assembly + testing)
  • Creative Arts (sewing machines for upholstery & harness, vinyl cutter for instrument panel stripe mask)
  • Digital Media (time-lapse cameras, equipment for testing a projection technique & space for design)
  • Electronics (instrument panel & gunsight work)
  • Printer (instrument mockup labels)
  • Jewelry (metal polishing)
  • 3D Fab (standard PolyPrinters for printing most functional parts and mediums-sized details, 508 for windshield assembly frame and seat bracket, Form 2 for smaller, more detailed parts, vacuum forming machine for part of the windshield assembly)
  • Laser (acrylic circles for some instruments and modification of air intake filter for the pneumatic instruments, Rowmark plastic etching for most of the placards, small- and full-scale prototyping of the cockpit structure in cardboard and thin plywood)
  • Common Area (for some of the design work)

2019-12-20%2016_32_42

Special thanks

  • David Schirato
  • Kris Anderson
  • Jim Hartnett
  • Tim Bene
  • David Schirato
  • Malcolm Galland, Jim Hartnett, Tim Bene, David Schirato, Charles Procter, David Kessinger, Chris Wischkowsky, Freddy Calvert, Austin Smith, James Watson, Bobby Price, and others for helping me gauge which aspects of my designs needed more attention before I made costly or time-consuming mistakes
  • Freddy Calvert for his help with Shark lathe to turn down the pitch axle so it would fit in the bearings
  • Clay Romeiser for teaching me the basics of aluminum solid riveting
  • Nick Sainz
  • Chuck Baber for help finding the proper tools and equipment for aluminum polishing
  • Chuck Graf for lending me his metal polishing compound and for his tips on deforming polycarbonate
  • Bill Scott for providing material for a rear view mirror (this didn’t make it into the trailer unfortunately, but I wish it had!)
  • Bobby Price for help forming a difficult joint for the top of the canopy, and for his help in finishing the fiberglass instrument panels shroud.
  • Stan Simmons for always being around and willing to help with DMS-related issues
  • Trent Tahern for help troubleshooting issues with the plasma cutter
  • Mark Salas for misc. wood shop help
  • John Gorman for teaching so many of the classes and always being willing to answer questions
  • Christopher Williams for the insight that the gimbal movement I would be using to simulate flight would create an unrealistic pull on the pilot that would have to be avoided or counteracted somehow
  • David Schirato
  • Tim Bene, Charles Procter and Jim Hartnett for their work keeping the plasma cutter up and running fairly reliably (we used it extensively)
  • Joe King for instructions and advice on how to tackle the fiberglass instrument panel shroud
  • Randy Lisbona for his ideas on making the assembly more portable
  • Max Kirkland and John K. for help with 3D printing issues
  • John K. for an introduction to the Shapeoko, and for misc. suggestions throughout the construction process
  • Everyone who spends time teaching classes at DMS
  • And once again, David Schirato, for many long days and very late nights of hard work, and for bringing his resourcefulness, practical know-how, and years of fabrication experience to bear on this project.

(I hope you’ll forgive me as I’m sure I must be forgetting a few people.)

Some additional tools used in the production design process

  • Fusion 360 (designing overall structure, making patterns for the laser and plasma cutters, and drawing up 3D-printed details)
  • AirCorps Library (provider of scans of North American Aviation technical drawings of Mustangs and Mustang parts, which proved an invaluable resource)
  • Blender (to help figure out some of the more tricky geometry)

I would be happy to put together more information on the process (for both the cockpit and the overall video) if anyone is interested, and will also make all the original RAW footage from the finished trailer (and even some footage that didn’t make it into the trailer) available to DMS members for use in classes, experiments, or other educational projects. Perhaps someone can even figure out a better use for it than I did!

So… was this project worth such a massive time investment? Maybe not. But if nothing else, I learned a ton and met some really cool people in the process. One of the highlights of spending so much time there was making the rounds to check out what other people were working on, and I have missed that. Hopefully I’ll make it back over there in the not-to-distant future.

Thanks again,

—Grant

The video

For those of you who don’t know the background of the project: my history teacher from way back in the 7th grade (who is a college professor in Oklahoma now) wrote a novel about a P-51 Mustang pilot, and asked me to make a preview video for it. I got a little bit carried away.

@schirato @Kriskat30 @hon1nbo @TBJK @malcolmputer @procterc @Photomancer @Chris_Wischkowsky @yashsedai @Austin.Smith @cdbjames @motopilot @Nick @dallasmagna @Trent_T @Mrksls2 @Christopher_Williams @worldcloud @rlisbona @maxk68 @talkers @Stevew

30 Likes
2

Never underestimate yourself. The skills you learned no body can ever take away from you. You can not loose them like you can money.

I was glad to help, I am also glad you were able to finish it.

16 Likes
3

Very cool video Grant, especially knowing what you put yourself through to learn the skills to make the cockpit, Keep us updated on your future premieres.
Randy Lisbona

6 Likes
4

Very nice. It was fun watching you work on that project. I’m glad it all turned out so well.

3 Likes
5

wow, oh my God

3 Likes
6

Amazing!

Now that you’ve “warmed up” on a trial project, what’s your next big project?

5 Likes
7

I am thankful for the opportunity to help it was a blast great fun. I also enjoyed your relentless motivation to complete the project just glad to be a part.

5 Likes
8

What a nice write-up! It’s always ultimately about people, isn’t it?
That you realized it so early in life is a blessing!

2 Likes
9

can we put this on social media?

2 Likes
10

Glad to see how this turned out!

The tours got a kick out of seeing that gimbal system being worked on.

2 Likes
11

A LITTLE CARRIED AWAY he says… So hey - where’d you end up shooting the footage? Last we spoke the Lewisville landfill mountain wasn’t going to work out.

1 Like
12

outstanding!

1 Like
13

Thanks—I’m still recovering from this one to be honest! I took a lot of time away from other things (working on my business for one) to have time for this project, so I’m facing a bit of catch-up work at this point.

Absolutely, that would be great! Let me know what you have in mind.

Thanks again for that inspired suggestion. Yes, they declined my request citing liability concerns.

For those who don’t know, we originally intended (and got a permit) to shoot on a mountain in a wildlife refuge in Oklahoma, but the only road up the mountain washed out. We also seriously considered Mt. Wilhelmina in Arkansas (another excellent suggestion thanks to several DMS members), but as I started working out the details, I eventually realized that shooting out there would have had one huge drawback: for logistical/budget reasons, it would have cost us almost all our ability to recover from unforeseen problems (including inclement weather). Given all that had gone into this project (and all the unforeseen challenges I had already faced at that point), I wasn’t prepared to make that gamble. On top of that, I began to doubt whether the horizon we were likely to get at one of these mountain locations would have been a very good fit for the shots we needed in the first place.

So I wound up simply finding a wide open paved area with a fairly open horizon in most directions, and I used the pitch axis of the gimbal to help frame the horizon out of the shot. It was far easier for everybody involved, and I still think it was the right call. The picture above (showing the cockpit outside) is at the actual shooting location, so that should give a good idea as to what it looked like there.

6 Likes
14

This project was one of the most amazing I have seen come out of the space. I’m so glad it worked out so well and I’m happy to have been a tiny part of it.

Folks this is what brings community together. The knowledge that came out of the heads of so many folks to make this happen at the space was worth any irritation from the few people who complained about the length of time or space required. It didn’t put anyone out and this is the kind of stuff we need to do more of to find that community spirit that has dwindled. Sorry for the soap box Grant but I think it’s important that the bigger picture of your project be realized and validated. Congratulations on your success!!

4 Likes
15

What happened to the bomber seat?? don’t loose that.

2 Likes
16

What makes makerspace great is a COMMUNITY of giving and sharing tools, knowledge and experience. Just having a bunch of cool tools is meaningless if no one knows how to use them or repair them.

1 Like
17

I’d love to see this converted into a flight simulator. This is probably one of the best projects made at DMS to date.

2 Likes
18

It’s still in the cockpit! I was also pretty happy with how the seat came together, although its steel construction makes it super heavy compared to a real bomber seat. Thanks again for the welding tips—and for the information on casting. Even though the 3D-printed brackets wound up being strong enough, it is still on my list of things to try in the future.

Yeah, that would be fun—both to build and to use! I basically designed this thing around the storyboard though, so there are a lot of gaps that would need to be filled in—particularly in the lower part of the cockpit—and probably some parts that would need to be redesigned/rebuilt. I’d need to think about this, but if there is enough overlap, I wonder if it might make sense to use parts of the design to help jumpstart an “open-source” P-51 flight sim cockpit design that would be relatively easy for people to build?

Update: A shorter BTS writeup has been featured on BlenderNation! Mustang — WWII Book Trailer (with BTS Photos) - BlenderNation

2 Likes
19

Amazing! Great job! Thank you so much for showing the end product.

1 Like
20

Update: we’re on Hackaday!

Edit: …and Make!

13 Likes